The Question of Truth in the Photographs of Simen Johan

"With their imposing size, articulated textures, and lifelike poses, the animals in Simen Johan's photographs have an uncanny quality of being literally present, as if they are not just recorded by the camera but are actual animals seen up close through a pane of clear glass."*

In Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes, two owls sit on a picnic table, two foxes stand together in the snow, bears and monkeys forage for food in a garbage dump, and a lone buffalo lies seemingly resigned in another garbage dump--this one made of inedible detritus where the surroundings have gone gray and the bright colors of the scraps pawed through by the bears and monkeys are nowhere to be seen.

The viewer may stand before the photographs and first think to herself that indeed she is looking at the truth: An animal caught mid-pose in world behind the glass. But as she looks closer there is quick realization that things can't possibly be as they seem. There is an eeriness to the owls, for instance, something not quite right when you look closely at their eyes. They are partially closed, squinting. It occurs to you that the owls were dead when the photograph was taken and probably never sat together on their picnic table at all.

In these photographs, Johan plays with the notion of truth. The truth of a photograph as well as the idea of truly seeing animals "as they are." The comparison between his photographs and dioramas found in natural history museums is inevitable. In fact, some of his subjects are taxidermied specimens on display in such settings. What is interesting is the way Johan's work pushes the viewer to consider not just the questionable truth of the photographs themselves, but the ways a diorama in a natural history museum can itself never present "truth," even as it works so hard to do that very thing. The diorama is constructed as if there are no humans present. The human visitors who look at the animals on the other side of the glass are lead to believe that they are glimpsing the essential nature of the animals on display: So this is what deer, moose, foxes, orangutans do in their worlds when we aren't around and can't see... 

By creating compositions that are too impossible to be true, and yet seem so familiar and so real that we may want to insist that they are still true in some way, Johan offers wry commentary on the ways we as viewers, visitors, and learners project our desires and expectations onto what we see.

At the same time his photographs have a push-pull effect: I see the buffalo and I am drawn in. I realize the scene is impossible and I am pushed back. I sense the buffalo's resignation and am pulled in once again. The truth of the image, of course, doesn't matter. This is something else Johan's work suggests: that the demarcations between truth and fantasy aren't so distinct. In fact, fantasy, the notion that what we see is "true" or somehow "real" even though we "know" it can't be, is something we need. It propels us along. Keeps us moving forward. Hoping that the dream we want is alive just around the corner.

And where are we in the meantime as we hope for that next perfect, ideal thing? As I wrote a few blogs ago, we are in the until. Where we may always be as our fantasies of a "kingdom" or that ultimate, longed for existence shifts, changes, and once again slips out of reach.

There is something else about Johan's work that is its own reward: the more you look at the photographs, the more you see, and what becomes apparent the more time you spend in the gallery is the way they hold up aesthetically both up close and at a distance. Step closer and watch as parakeets and monkeys emerge from the background and colors and textures come into relief; step back and take in the shapes of bear bodies curved and arced and slumped over mounds of discarded food that begins to look like hills of flowers. Again the push and pull in another, equally intriguing way.

-- LAP

* The quotation at the beginning of this post is from Mark Scala, "Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes,"gallery guide, written to accompany Frist Center exhibition, on view from Feb. 20 through May 29, 2011.